San Diego mayor takes aim at county, state partners

San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria stirred up controversy with an impassioned state of the city speech in which he told residents the county needs to step up efforts to reduce homelessness by providing supportive services.

The city’s primary job is to create housing, while the responsibility for mental health services lies with the county, he noted.

His comments brought a sharp rebuke from County Supervisor Monica Montgomery Steppe, who was in attendance when he delivered his speech in city hall on Jan. 15. Steppe said the mayor had not met with the county to review steps they are taking to alleviate the problem.

Supervisors and others called the talk “blame shifting.” The county on Tuesday will take up a proposal from Steppe to add more in-patient beds for mentally ill homeless people at Paradise Valley Hospital.

The 2024 point-in-time count for homelessness in San Diego County found that 10,605 people were experiencing homelessness. This was a 3% increase from the previous year. 

The city also faces a $250 million deficit, which Gloria said rings an era of austerity. The city had floated Measure E, a sales tax proposal in November, that was expected to resolve a structural deficit and pay for a long list of infrastructure and road projects. However, it failed.

To address the deficit, Gloria said he is freezing hiring for all but the most essential positions and halting non-essential spending, among other midyear adjustments.  He is also evaluating city office leases and asked department heads to look for places to cut.

“It is my expectation that we handle this structural deficit this year. No gimmicks. No Hail Mary passes,” he said. “No cavalry is coming to save us. We can’t wait for yet another revenue measure that might fail. We certainly can’t count on assistance from the federal government, which under the incoming administration is far more likely to burden us than to help us.”

Gloria said he will remain focused on his four core priorities — building more housing, addressing homelessness, repairing roads, and keeping San Diegans safe — albeit within a tightly constrained budget. 

His focus on housing will shift in 2025 to creating more homes for sale; and in coming months, he said, he will unveil a plan to incentivize the construction of starter homes, like row homes, town homes and condos to create more first-time home ownership opportunities. The city has issued permits for roughly 18,500 homes since Gloria took office two years ago, he said.

Gloria said county supervisors voted to delay implementation of Senate Bill 43, the state conservatorship law called CARE court. He said that while the county finally allowed the bill to take effect at the beginning of 2025, it did little in its one-year delay to prepare for implementation and has yet to take meaningful steps to address the shortage of behavioral health care beds.  

Gloria has been a big supporter of state legislation allowing for the creation of CARE courts, a codified a process for court-ordered, individualized interventions and services, stabilizing medication, advanced mental health directives and housing assistance. The law also requires counties to provide comprehensive treatment for severe mental illness.

“Mental health and addiction are often at the core of homelessness,” Gloria said. “And behavioral health, mental health, and treatment for substance use disorders are all services that are supposed to be provided by the county government. The city of San Diego does not have a Health and Human Services Agency. But the county does.” 

Steppe disputed the mayor’s comments, saying he didn’t do his due diligence, and pointed to her proposal on tomorrow’s supervisors meeting agenda. In addition to adding patient beds, she said, supervisors have plans to expand outpatient treatment options for people with Medi-Cal insurance, to bolster long-term housing options for people with behavioral health conditions and to expand behavioral health workforce training.

Gloria also called on the California Department of Transportation, responsible for maintaining the land along San Diego’s freeways, to clear the dangerous encampments that have taken hold in rights-of-way and clean up the tons of garbage they produce. 

Gloria said he is so “passionate about this,” because it affects the city’s bottom line.

“Every dollar this city spends responding to the lack of action from other cities, the county, or the state is a dollar not being spent on fixing our roads, upgrading our stormwater systems or supporting public safety,” he said.